Born to be wild

Today I had lunch with my mother-in-law, and we had a great time! We went to a place called Mazatlan (a restaurant, not the city, har har), and both agreed that it was excellent. For anyone who lives in our area, I recommend it highly--the food is about ten times better than Hacienda (the sort of "generic" Mexican chain around here) and much more reasonably priced. We had some good laughs, but some serious conversation, too. She is very proud of her son, and I know she's happy that he's finally happy. We had a very nice time. Whew, I'm not used to eating that much for lunch, though...I was very close to taking a nap, but I've gotten my second wind.

Jamie, I think the other place you were talking about is Fiesta Tapatia. I had seen commercials for it, but couldn't remember the name, but saw it on the way to Mazatlan--it's just east of there, on McKinley. We'll have to try that one, too.

So I'm behind on blogs, but I'll catch up!

Did anyone catch the show on ABC last night about the Alaskan bear guy? His name is Charlie, and he has 40 acres in Alaska. He's what you could call a Bear Whisperer, and started making friends with all these bears that came into his yard. Black bears and grizzlies...he started feeding them (which is illegal to do unless you are hunting them), and became very friendly with them. He would play with them, lay down by them, let them snatch fig newtons out of his mouth...the guy was obviously more than just a little eccentric. It was kind of neat to see these huge bears play with him, but it also made me very uneasy.

They talked to a biologist about this, and he said that what Charlie was doing was wrong. These are wild animals, and should not be made to have no fear of human beings. (I was recently in a discussion with someone about wolves not fearing humans, so it reminded me of that.) He was also essentially training them to do tricks (grabbing the cookie out of his mouth, for example), and the biologist felt there was a certain circus element to the whole thing. He said that it was inevitable that someone would get hurt, and felt that the state would eventually put an end to this. He was right on both counts.

A cameraman filming for a documentary about this got a deep slash on his ankle when he got between a bear and her cub. The state of Alaska soon began working towards stopping this, and Charlie had to put up a fence and stop feeding the bears. You could tell that it broke his heart, but he did seem to realize that it was for the best. The program ended by saying that Charlie is facing several counts against him, even though he's stopped feeding the bears and stopped letting them come up to (and into) his house.

Personally, I hope they drop the charges and let the guy be. He's stopped doing it, he's 70 years old...just let it drop. However, I believe that what he was doing was wrong. There is a reason that any state or national park you drive through has signs erected to NOT feed the bears, but you always see some dumbass in the Smokies with a bag of freakin' marshmallows. These are wild animals, and they can kill you. (Especially grizzlies...the program said that grizzlies are known for decapitating their victims. Yikes.) If people feed them, they become emboldened, and will be less wary of coming into an area where humans are. That's when people get hurt, and you know what happens when people get hurt by a wild animal? They kill the animal.

It's just a bad idea all the way around. You know that I've spoken about how cute our raccoons and Groundy (our groundhog) are, and how sometimes I feel like I could reach out and scratch the raccoons on the head. The young ones will come right up to the sliding glass door and look in at me, raise up on their back legs and wave their little arms around in the air...oh my God, they are so cute! I'll usually indulge myself a little when they're younger, and try to get closeup pictures of them, but I try to make sure that they know the boundaries and know that if they come up here, they're apt to get popped with the BB gun. I guess I feel that it's best to try to keep a line drawn between us. Groundy may make her home under the deck walkway, and the raccoons may like to come over and look in our windows, but I'm not inviting them into the house. I suspect Sheeba would have something to say about that! (Imagine a black cat with his back arched, tail all bushed out.)

I'm of the "let the wild things be" school.